


had no direction to go but up

by honeymilktea (rosevtea)



Series: to make any other mistake [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Denial, Established Relationship, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26959573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosevtea/pseuds/honeymilktea
Summary: It’s a moment or a thousand, but Sakusa Kiyoomi has spun himself into an abstract.
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi
Series: to make any other mistake [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1967167
Kudos: 135





	had no direction to go but up

**Author's Note:**

> companion piece to end of/a little after part 1 from atsumu's pov. reading pt 1 isn't necessary!
> 
> here's some good old relationship insecurity

_granite peaks: here, the earth has asserted itself. and the ice asserted  
and human intimacies conspired to keep us low and apart_

There is a park, and a swingset, and Miya Atsumu, falling into the concrete, into the sky, into Sakusa Kiyoomi standing behind him, all harsh edges melted away into something he can’t quite comprehend. Something he has never learned how to hold—glass-like, ethereal in nature, living in the shadow of a smile. A slight curve, unfurling along the edges of heartlines he doesn’t know how to read, carving into his hands like a burn.

It’s a moment or a thousand, but Sakusa Kiyoomi has spun himself into an abstract. Atsumu can’t recall how or when or where—if that mattered, if any of this matters—but there are hands on his back and the sharp tinge of surprise pierces his taste buds. Sakusa—Omi-kun—Kiyoomi speaks, and warm tones have superimposed themselves onto the bite, a kind sort of dedication to the act. If there is one. There should be one, but Atsumu is—

At the vending machine, dark eyes tracing him in evident resentment. Now a memory. Recently, whenever Kiyoomi looks at him, it’s anyone’s guess as to what he’s thinking. Atsumu wants to try, but the world is already slanting at his feet. It’s enough to be granted the gift of flying like this, right now, gold on his back and silver on Kiyoomi’s gentleness, a hysterical-turned-fathomable notion.

 _Careful, Omi-kun_ , Atsumu thinks as the sky reaches towards him in cold, relentless fingers, _when you’re like this, who knows what could happen?_

The world blinks sleepily in reply.

.

And the shape of his demise comes like this: the terrifying realization of forgetting how to unlearn the gaze of someone he could love. A case study of a person who quieted the world with the thunder of a vengeful spirit and an even more vengeful smile.

This is a losing battle, Atsumu sulks in the corner of a universe beginning to cave in. What’s the point? But he knows. The shape of his demise looks like this: learning the gaze of someone he loves, spinning into the heels of a voided desire. It has an ending, but his dramatics are already taking him by the hand, desperation closing in on his wrist. Bronze staining everything in his path, even when he’s alone. _This is a losing battle_ , he brands on his fingertips when he crosses a vending machine and turns around to empty air.

 _What are you doing?_ he shouts in his head, aloud sometimes. Osamu always storms in and shouts at him to stop, but it fails to hold back the second part of the sentence, left wanting: _Do you even know, Omi-kun? Do you feel it too?_

.

“Really? After all this?”

“After all this.”

Kiyoomi does something with his mouth, then. It leaves Atsumu threadbare, open to attack. What he had wanted to say—in a moment of weakness or strength, he’s not sure—was _je suis à toi._ A simplicity. A conclusion to a case study, but when has he ever made things easy, for himself or anyone? Not even this abstract-turned-hole in his heart gets an exception.

He doesn’t say that, of course, because he still has his pride. Saying cheesy shit like that with a straight face is not his forte, and it’s not Kiyoomi’s style either. He knows this.

 _I am yours_ , in the laughter he lets out, in the hand, shaking, that reaches across the chasm and takes quivering fingers into his own. In the handkerchief, so bold, so sharply resigned to his care. Kiyoomi in front of him, staring at him like a revelation had jumped out from a storybook and slammed into his chest. It could be warm, or he could be in love. A welcome parallel for the two assholes, one heaven-sent, the other left stunned in the aftermath of a tidal wave.

Atsumu thinks he prefers it like this. “Right, Kiyoomi?”

Fingers tighten against the palm of his hand. There’s something to be said about how unfairly tight his chest is to something that, in all accounts, should be so small, but Kiyoomi has this way of magnifying everything he considers, elevating it to this sort of pedestal so he can study it. Atsumu is caught in the crossfire and he feels optified in the face of this brutal honesty, this implacable—

.

“Stop overthinking,” Kiyoomi tells him two days later. Which, what the hell, isn’t fair when they haven’t talked about it.

Atsumu pouts back. What is he supposed to say to that? The truth? No way he could ever say _shut up, I can’t stop thinking about you_ or, even worse, _I’m in love with you, asshole_ because he couldn’t say it so unflinchingly. Not the way he wants to, not the way he’s dyed it in his head.

“I’m not overthinking anything,” Atsumu says back, retreating to the safety line before Kiyoomi or anyone else moves the goalposts. He knows what he’s expecting, but Kiyoomi just leans back and looks at him thoughtfully. Like he’s crawling into his soul, or something equally as weird, but there’s something cool in the weight of Kiyoomi’s gaze, almost soothing if he let himself buy into it.

It comes again, that glassy, sharp look. Dipped in fondness, Atsumu almost doesn’t recognize it. “You called me Kiyoomi, that night.”

And Atsumu almost curls into himself. Right. Of course. In the miasma, Kiyoomi would remember that, because his memory’s perfect like the rest of him. _Unfair_ , Atsumu wants to think, but that’s not true, either. He’s just perfect in all the planes Atsumu can see, everything that has ever mattered. The sharp edges melting into thin lines. Atsumu’s gazes morphing into longing, or whatever.

“I—” Okay, yeah, he did, but what choice did he have? It wasn’t unreachable, angry Sakusa or closed off, quietly irritated Omi-kun scooping up his remains and holding him close, was it? Kiyoomi, offering him the bronze, the silver, whatever shade of gold was laced between the rib cages of some crevice, is unfathomable. Looking at him like he—like he wants. What choice does he have?

“Any day now—” Kiyoomi’s gaze darts away. He’s smiling faintly and Atsumu is staring at his stupid, perfect face “—Atsumu.”

A moment of truth, snatched from his skull: “ _Je suis_ —” Atsumu slams the brakes and seals his lips shut. Frustrated at the world or himself? Both, depending on the angle. “Damnit, Omi-kun. Kiyoomi. Don’t make me say it when you already know.”

.

So there’s a thing now, sort of. Some undefined, tangible, horrifying thing that forms a shaky bridge and allows things like Kiyoomi leaning over the table and brushing the side of his lips at a boba shop, indiscreet in his smugness. What Atsumu means to say is: how am I meant to survive you. No add-ons, no question marks, just this.

What he actually says is: “Careful, Kiyoomi, we’re in public.”

“And what about this is indecent?” There is a mirth where there wasn’t before, lingering along the lack of tension in Kiyoomi’s jawline, and Atsumu isn’t staring, it’s just right there. “The only thing at this table that should come with a warning is you.”

So vicious, so vicious, and it tailspins into the smile on Atsumu’s lips. For all the venom he spits, Kiyoomi is careful with what he lets hang in the air.

Atsumu tilts his head. “Oh? What’s the warning say?” And he’s counting the moments Kiyoomi holds his gaze because, at heart, he’s curious about what any of this means. “Miya Atsumu, the most—”

“Just stop there.”

To anyone else, he’d look displeased. The spellbound, ecstatic grin on Atsumu’s face would look like insanity, probably, but he is content to keep chipping away at this iceberg, this compelling enigma he has been granted access to. God, Atsumu is falling into him, too.

He wants to eat the abstract whole. The words, clunky, amass themselves in his mouth and there is just so much to ask for. Instead he goes with, “Aw, you scared?” because _so much_ can easily tumble into _too much_ and he is aware that the space Kiyoomi has created for him has boundaries, much like the rest of his life. Now is not the time to play hopscotch with the lines.

Especially not when Kiyoomi looks at him like he could fit him into a new definition. Of what? Peace? He doesn’t know how to balance peace on his tongue, not since Samu first taught him how to fight and love in the same breath, so that better not be what Kiyoomi’s expecting to get from him. Harsh edges have smoothed over, not disappeared, and he should know this.

Kiyoomi says, “You’re so annoying,” just to be the one to end the conversation, like a piece of shit.

Atsumu lets him have it because he’s too busy wondering if he could get away with kissing him here, over the crumb-filled table, just because he wanted to. He thinks about it as he stands up, hand trembling against the back of his chair.

When Kiyoomi nods toward the door, he decides, _nah, I could do better_. Location-wise, mood-wise. Probably a wise decision in general, too. The ratio of how hard Kiyoomi would have punched him if he tried is unknown and, ideally, will stay unknown. All that follows them out the door is stupid, silly staccato beats, one after the other as cautious hands encircle his wrist. It’s harrowing, magnified across the entirety of his head like this. It’s thrilling, in a way contact taken for granted never is.

Taken for granted. Like he could ever resist the urge to try and memorize the pads of barely-there fingers, pushing against a boundary just for him. All for him. A desire of something, lingering. A stronger emotion, all-encompassing in his corner of the universe and the corner of Kiyoomi’s mouth, tilting upward, sliding helplessly down into a hollow half-filled.

It’s so easy. It scares him, more than sometimes.

.

 _In love._ Such a soft premonition. Kiyoomi could cup it in his hands, Atsumu might shatter it. It’s things like these, the thoughts that float around in the water next to the iceberg, that makes tenderness such a danger.

Kiyoomi watches him sometimes. Unsubtly, which Atsumu relishes in calling out. Beyond that, though, he wonders what he sees. There’s a magnitude in the steady, calm gaze, the blank set of his mouth. Atsumu feels perceived, scalded from the inside-out for no other reason than _this is the pedestal and this is where Kiyoomi has placed you_ and it’s horrifying how affected he is, if he’s being honest. But he’s not, so he settles on _mildly intimidated_ and pretends he doesn’t know.

But he does want to ask. Whether he’s pretending or not, it’s yet another abstract in the ocean. He doesn’t have the time to drink it all in. He wants, impossibly, for Kiyoomi to give it to him of his own volition, like an altar or a sacrifice, dragging him to dizzying depths.

Atsumu knows it’s selfish. He takes comfort in the ignorance that obscures him.

.

“You’re holding something back,” Kiyoomi notes almost absently, perched at the edge of Atsumu’s couch like he usually is for these nights. “What is it?”

His tone curls around a whole heap of things: curious, loose, _kind._ Kiyoomi might be the death of him. “What, you can read me now?”

Kiyoomi has the nerve to smile at this, except happiness on him is like the glacier rising another inch and Atsumu is helpless to these increasingly awe-inspiring gestures. Moving the earth so quietly. How dare he demand the presence of the world like this whenever he’s in Atsumu’s vicinity? No one else besides Samu has ever—could ever—move him to admittance so fast. It’s painful how sharply the inclination to touch him lurches against his entire being.

 _Ethereal in nature_ , he had thought once.

“You’re not subtle.” Kiyoomi’s gaze shifts, and nothing about it is accusatory or exasperated. Atsumu, accordingly, feels his soul leaving his body. “You’ve been trying to avoid me for days now.”

“I have _not_ —”

“Just spit it out. It’s not like you to be so cautious.”

The thing is, Atsumu never quite figured out how to make the words as pretty as Kiyoomi deserves, forming them into shapeless dull yellows rather than the neon he’d been gifted. It feels unfair, like the rest of their playing field. Maybe he should get used to it, but it’s more about the inadequacy clinging to the backs of his hands that bothers him than anything else. Alright, Kiyoomi is in front of him, mesmerizing and close enough to touch for now. What happens when he falls short and breaks something? What fucking then?

“It’s not important,” he says. Kiyoomi frowns at him but doesn’t disturb the silence.

.

 _Why_ , the glacier, ever the conversationalist, asks him.

Because it had been fine until it toppled into the realm of possibility. In his imagination, he can fuck up as much as he wants and it won’t have mattered, in this dimension or the next.

There’s something about Kiyoomi that inspires the perilous need to be honest, sweeping over his predisposed habits like sand dunes rendering desert maps useless. Uncharted, all of this, from the tips of perched toes to the entirety of a person that used to be a skyscraper, brought down to his size. Unearthed, this ache of his that builds whenever affection coexists alongside the two of them, wandering the earth next to them in movements Atsumu still can’t really register as his to have.

Yesterday, Kiyoomi had draped his jacket over Atsumu’s shoulders as easily as breathing, warmth squeezing around his chest and collapsing everything in sight. Goodbye to his heart and his sanity, because Kiyoomi had looked at him with such sharp endearment, he could hardly breathe. Did he breathe? The sky might as well have broken in two. Atsumu could have flown into the stratosphere and he still wouldn’t get far enough away to handle it.

Fuck it, he wants to kiss him, he’s selfish. There is nothing he can do about it, but the desire puts him in range to strike. He doesn’t want to, but it could happen. It sounds like the silence upending the furniture and the walls and the curiously-shaped pain going after his trachea after Samu had slammed the door in the longest fight of their lives, and it could sound like any number of things with Kiyoomi. It—he can’t learn that.

When he had told Kiyoomi that he knew what he was feeling, he meant that Kiyoomi could tell he held a strong sort of fondness for him. Love had been out of reach. But the coldness edges out of his vision and Kiyoomi is the one to greet him. Has been the one to greet him for a while, and okay, yeah, he’s in love. It’s irritatingly easy to be, when the world coalesces to silver in his presence, when he’s greeted with a wordless appreciation now allowed to exist in the empty space.

There’s a space where he has to figure out how to navigate the _handle with care_ signs without decimating one or all of them. Maybe he’s waiting for his own sign from Kiyoomi. Maybe that’s selfish. Atsumu still wants to kiss him.

.

The catalyst is, of all things, Kiyoomi handing him a drink. It’s not even his favorite flavor. Kiyoomi wanted him to try it because he figured he’d like it, and something about the pleased tint of his voice sent him into a tailspin of wretched, wretched fondness.

He wants to hold him or jump off a cliff. Who cares what? Just something impossible.

“Stop looking at me like that,” is the inevitable reply when Kiyoomi sits in front of him. He looks and feels and sounds like a mirage. _Would he taste like one too_ , Atsumu wonders, and then remember that’s a really weird fucking thought. It doesn’t stop it from resting against the crook of his neck like a terrible one-liner, but it is a really weird fucking thought. “I’m not fragile.”

“I’ll look at you however I want,” Atsumu says smugly. The thing in his chest is half-filled, half-baked, only half-dipped in everything he’s wanted to admit ever since he laid eyes on Sakusa Kiyoomi and saw something he didn’t hate, someone he could get lost talking to. Tectonic plates slamming into each other, the world rises and falls and he is so helplessly caught in laugh lines and love lines and every line—scowl, reluctant triumph, whatever—that connects him to Kiyoomi.

Atsumu props a hand against his cheek and lets the smile show, because what a fact that is. What a beautiful fucking fact.

“Careful, Atsumu, we’re in public,” and this gentle admonishment, this quiet—this quiet _love_ spins the wheel of fortune another three rounds, pushes the hysterical-turned-fathomable in reach. What a wonderful world, as the sun streams in and cuts across Kiyoomi’s lips in deadly strokes. What a wonderful day.

He could still break this. He could still—

Kiyoomi’s pushing himself over the table in merciless confidence, one hand splayed across the edge, curving into his space like they’ve done this a thousand times. It’s terrifying. Kiyoomi has always been some shade of unpredictable underneath the boundaries, unsheathing it like a knife whenever he felt angry or threatened or something inexorably willful, jumping from his skin like solar flares. He’s doing it now, too, but he looks far too pleased to be angry and Atsumu didn’t do shit.

He could break this, but so could Kiyoomi, huh? And yet he looks at him like this. Marveling at him like this, ethereal glass-like wonder all magnified in his direction, a moonbeam in bloom. Of course Atsumu is left wanting. What else can he do?

“Atsumu, I don’t know what you’re not telling me,” Kiyoomi announces flatly, “but I’m going to kiss you.” It’s so warm. Atsumu’s so in love. A hilariously straightforward ending to that paradox.

Atsumu looks up and grins like he’s leaving fire in his wake. Better to pretend for these things, when someone more potent is in front of him. “What are you waiting for?” he asks. Bluntly, _finally_. Only Kiyoomi can truly answer, Atsumu’s corner of the universe expanding like this.

_we journey this day to darkness: the chasm walls lift us on their scaly backs_  
_the glaciers relinquish their secrets: that sound is the ice bowing_  
_and the sound underneath, the trickle: the past released, disappearing_

**Author's Note:**

> [twt](https://twitter.com/komosunaist) | [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/komosuna)
> 
> title and epigraphs are from [continental divide](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51144/continental-divide) by d.a. powell. it's funny bc I was in writing burnout and then I was just. compelled to write this. will now disappear to schoolwork and more burnout


End file.
